Politics And The English Language

252 HORIZON

hands, Semi-Christian retribution, instead of im-Christian
revenge? For his own good my poHcy shall be. Nemesis. It's no
good sacrificing yourself. You must stand up to people. Storm
of mounting harmonies. Look! Those same white cliffs we saw when
we arrived. Payment in kind. I had a pet rahhit and when it fell and
broke its hack. Good God! A raid? I never heard the siren. That one
must have landed pretty near. Beneath the soaring and the
'pleading the piano races, merrily sustaining. Forgive, forgive!
Ding-dong. It reaUy was extraordinary how fantastically alone I
felt up there beside him in the wind. Cadenza allegro moderato.
Sheer decoration. Beethoven? Perfume descending from a
balcony of cultivated flowers. Now, the Hght from the fire.
Orpheus with his lyre. Neither semi-Christian retribution nor
un-Christian revenge. Forgiveness entire, Orpheus with his lyre
made trees . . . Oh, Gladys , honey, I forgot to mention. I asked a
friend of mine to come to this darned concert of music with us.
I must hear this bit and then I must somehow get out before the
end. I can never see tliis man again, immemorial melody. Calm,
compassionate, serene, profound, I have heard it before six
thousand years ago. Light shed from fire. The fire dies. Then
• so must the hght, unless — ^Whirlwind. Wert thou my enemy,
O thou my friend, how wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than
thou dost defeat, thwart me? Wert thou my enemy, O thou
my friend, ...

GEORGE ORWELL

POLITICS AND THE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that
the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed
that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our
civihzation is decadent, and our language — so the argument
runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows
that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental
archaism, hke preferring candles to electric hght or hansom cabs

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POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 253

to aeroplanes. Underneath this Hes the half-conscious beHef that
language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we
shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately
have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad
influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become
a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same
effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may
take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then
fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the
same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes
ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the
slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have fooHsh
thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern
Enghsh, especially written EngHsh, is full of bad habits which
spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to
take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can
think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step
towards poHtical regeneration: so that the fight against bad English
is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional
writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by
that time the meaning of what I have said here wiU have become
clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language
as it is now habitually written.

These five passages have not been picked out because they are
especially bad — I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen —
but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which
we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly
representative samples. I number them so that I can refer back to
them when necessary:

'(i) I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that
the Milton who once seemed not unhke a seventeenth-century
Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter
in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect
which notliing could induce him to tolerate.'

Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression).

'{2) Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native
battery of idioms which prescribes such egregious collocations of
vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate or put at a loss for
bewilder. Professor Lancelot Hogben {Interglossa).

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254

HORIZON

* (3) On the one side we have the free personality: by definition
it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires,
such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional
approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institu-
tional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is
little in them that is natural' irreducible, or culturally dangerous.
But ' 0/1 the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the
mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the defini-
tion of love. Is not tliis the very picture of a small academic?
Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality
or fraternity?' Essay on psychology in Politics (New York).

'(4) All the "best people" from the gentlemen's clubs, and all
the frantic fascist captains, united in common hatred of Sociahsm
and bestial horror of the rising tide of the mass revolutionary
movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incen-
diarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their
own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the
agitated petty-bourgeoisie to chauvinistic fervour on behalf of
the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.'

Communist pamphlet.

* (5) If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is
one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and
that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity
here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of
Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the
British hon's roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's
Midsummer Night's Dream — as gentle as any sucking dove. A
virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced
in the eyes, or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of
Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as "standard Enghsh".
When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and
infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the
present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma' amish arch braying
of blameless bashful mewing maidens!' Letter in Tribune.

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart
from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them.
The first is staleness of imagery: the other is lack of precision. The
writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadver-
tently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether

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POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 255

his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and
sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern
EngHsh prose, and especially of any kind of pohtical writing. As
soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the
abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are
not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the
sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked
together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. I hst below,
with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which
the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged:

Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought
by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor
which is technically 'dead' (e.g. iron resohition) has in effect
reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used
without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there
is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evoca-
tive power and are merely used because they save people the
trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring
the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, ride roughshod
over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to
grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled xuaters, on the order of the
day, Achilles heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without
knowledge of their meaning (what is a 'rift', for instance?), and
incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that
the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors
now current have been twisted out of their original meaning
without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For
example, toe the line is sometimes written tow the line. Another
example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the
imphcation that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real hfe it is
always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way
about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would
be aware of tliis, and would avoid perverting the original phrase.

Operators, or verbal false limbs. These save the trouble of picking
out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the sam^ time pad each
sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of
symmetry. Characteristic phrases are: reifder inoperative, militate
against, prove unacceptable, make contact with, he subjected to, give

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256

HORIZON

rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in,
make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of,
etc., etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead
of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb
becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to
some general-purposes verb such as prove, serve, form, play,
render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in
preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead
of gerunds {by examination of instead o£by examining). The range
of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- forma-
tions, and banal statements are given an appearance of profundity
by means of the not m- formation. Simple conjunctions and
prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having
regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the
hypothesis that', and the ends of sentences are saved from anti-
chmax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired,
cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near
future, deserving of. serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory
conclusion, and so on and so forth.

Pretentious diction. Words Uke phenomenon, element, individual
(as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary,
promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are
used to dress up simple statement and give an air of scientific
impartiahty to biased judgements. Adjectives Hke epoch-
making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable,
inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid processes of
international pohtics, while writing that aims at glorifying war
usually takes on an archaic colour, its characteristic words being:
realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler,
banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as
cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, statu?
quo, gleichschaltung, Weltanschauung, are used to give an air of
culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g.,
and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign
phrases now current in English, Bad writers, and especially
scientific, pohtical and sociological writers, are nearly always
haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander
than Saxon ones, and linnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate,
predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous and hundreds

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POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 257

of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon
opposite numbers.* The jargon pecuHar to Marxist writing
[hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lacquey,
flunkey, mad dog. White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words
and phrases translated from Russian, German or French; but the
normal way of coining a new word is to use a Latin or Greek
root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the -ize
formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind {de-
regionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentatory and so
forth) than to think up the EngHsh words that will cover one's
meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenhness and
vagueness.

Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in
art criticism and Hterary criticism, it is normal to come across long
passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.^
Words hke romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental,
natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless,
in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable
object, but are hardly even expected to do so by the reader. When
one critic writes, *The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its
Kving quahty', while another writes, 'The immediately striking
thing about Mr. X's work is its pecuHar deadness', the reader
accepts this as a simple difference of opinion. If words like black
and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and
living, he would see at once that language was being used in an
improper way. Many poHtical words are similarly abused. The
word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies

^ An interesting illustration of this is the way in which the EngUsh flower
names which were in use till very recently are being ousted by Greek ones,
snapdragon becoming antirrhinum, forget-me-not becoming myosotis, etc. It is
hard to see any practical reason for this change of fashion: it is probably due to
an instinctive tuming-away from the more homely word and a vague feeling
that the Greek word is scientific.

2 Example; 'Comfort's cathoUcity of perception and image, strangely
"Whitmanesque in range, almost the exact opposite in aesthetic compulsion,
continues to evoke that trembling atmospheric accumulative hinting at a cruel,
an inexorably serene timelessness . . . Wrey Gardiner scores by aiming at
simple buUseyes with precision. Only they are not so simple, and through this
contented sadness runs more than the surface bitter-sweet of resignation.*
{IPoetry Quarterly.)

D

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258

HORIZON

* something not desirable'. The words democracy, socialism, free-
dom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different
meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the
case of a word Hke democracY^not only is there no agreed definition,
but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost
universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are
praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime
claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to
stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.
Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.
That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition,
but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.
Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot. The Soviet Press
is the freest in the world. The Catholic Church, is opposed to persecu-
tion, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words
used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly,
are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois,
equality.

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perver-
sions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they
lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one, I am
going to translate a passage of good Bnghsh into modern EngHsh
of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

*I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the
swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise,
nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of
skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.'

Here it is in modern Enghsh:

* Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels
the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities
exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity,
but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must in-
variably be taken into account.'

This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3), above,
for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English.
It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The begin-
ning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning
fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations — race,
batde, bread — dissolve into the vague phrase 'success or failure

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POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 259

in competitive activities'. This had to be so, because no modem
writer of the kind I am discussing — no one capable of using
phrases hke 'objective consideration of contemporary phenomena*
— ^would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed
way. The whole tendency of modem prose is away from con-
creteness. Now analyse these two sentences a Uttle more closely.
The first contains 49 words but only 60 syllables, and all its words
are those of everyday hfe. The second contains 38 words of 90
syllables: 18 of its words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek.
The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase
('time and chance') that could be called vague. The second
contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its
90 syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning con-
tained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second land of
sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not
want to exaggerate. Tliis kind of writing is not yet universal,
and outcrops of simphcity will occur here and there in the
worst-written page. SriU, if you or I were told to write a few lines
on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come
much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from
Ecclesiastes.

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not
consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and
inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It
consists in gumming together long strips of words which have
already been set in order by someone else, and making the results
presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of
writing is that it is easy. It is easier — even quicker, once you have
the habit — to say In my opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption that
than to say / think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only
don't have to hunt about for words; you also don't have to
bother with the rhythms of your sentences, since these phrases are
generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When
you are composing in a hurry — ^when you are dictating to a
stenographer, for instance, or making a pubhc speech — ^it is
natural to fall into a pretentious. Latinized style. Tags hke a con-
sideration which we should do well to hear in mind or a conclusion to
which all of us would readily assent wiU save many a sentence from
coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes and
idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your

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26o

HORIZON

meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This
is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a meta-
phor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash — ^as in
The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song^ the jackboot is thrown into
the melting pot — ^it can be taken as certain that the writer is not
seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words
he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the
beghming of this essay.- Professor Laski (i) uses five negatives in
53 words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the
whole passage, and in addition there is the shp alien for akin,
making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsi-
ness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2)
plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write
prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase
put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and
see what it means. (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude
towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out
its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which
it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants
to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like
tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost
parted company. People who write in this manner usually have
a general emotional meaning — they dislike one thing and want to
express solidarity with another — ^but they are not interested in the
detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every
sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions,
thus: What am I trying to say? What words wiU express iv.
What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh
enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two
more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is
avoidably ugly? But you are not obhged to go to all this trouble.
You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting
the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct
your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a
certain extent — and at need they will perform the important
service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.
It is at this point that the special connection between politics and
the debasement of language becomes clear.

In our time it is broadly true that poHtical writing is bad
writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the

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POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 261

writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and
not a 'party line'. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to
demand a lifeless, imitative style. The pohtical dialects to be found
in pamplilets, leading articles, manifestos, White Papers and the
speeches of under-secretaries do, of course, vary from party to
party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them
a fresh, vivid, home-made turn of speech. When one watches
some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the
famihar phrases — bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny,
free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a
curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but
some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger
at moments when the hght catches the speaker's spectacles and
turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind
them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses
that kind of phraseology has gone some distance towards turning
himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of
his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were
choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one
that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be
almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters
the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if
not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.

In our time, poHtical speech and writing are largely the defence
of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in
India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the
atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by argu-
ments wliich are too brutal for most people to face, and which
do not square with the professed aims of pohtical parties. Thus
poHtical language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-
begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are
bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the
countryside, the cattle machine-gumied, the huts set on fire with
incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants
are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with
no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or
rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without
trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in
Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.
Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without

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262

HORIZON

calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some
comfortable English, professor defending Russian totaHtarianism.
He cannot say outright, 'I believe in kiUing off your opponents
when you can get good results by doing so'. Probably, therefore,
he will say something hke this:

'While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits
certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to
deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the
right to pohtical opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of
transitional periods, and that the rigours which the Russian people
have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in
the sphere of concrete achievement. '

The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin
words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and
covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is
insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's
declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and
exhausted idioms, hke a cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age
there is no such thing as 'keeping out of poHtics'. AU issues are
pohtical issues, and pohtics itself is a mass of hes, evasions, foUy,
hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad,
language must suffer. I should expect to find — tliis is a guess which
I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German,
Russian and Itahan languages have all deteriorated in the last ten
or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt
thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even
among people who should and do know better. The debased
language that I have been discussing is in some ways very con-
venient. Phrases like a not unjustijiable assumption, leaves much to
he desired, ivould serve no good purpose, a consideration which we
should do well to hear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a
packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. Look back through this
essay, and for certain you wiU find that I have again and again
committed the very faults I am pitotesting against. By this
morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions
in Germany. The author tells me that he 'felt impelled' to write
it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence that I
see: ' (The AUies) have an opportunity not only of achieving a
radical transformation of Germany's social and pohtical structure

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POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 263

in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany
itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-opera-
tive and unified Europe.' You see, he 'feels impelled' to write —
feels, presumably, that he has something new to say — and yet
his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group them-
selves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This in-
vasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases {lay the foundations,
achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is
constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaes-
thetizes a portion of one's brain.

I said ear her that the decadence of our language is probably
curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an
argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social
conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any
direct tinkering widi words and constructions. So far as the
general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it
is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often dis-
appeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the
conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were
explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were
killed by the jeers of a few journahsts. There is a long hst of
flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough
people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be
possible to laugh the not un~ formation out of existence,^ to
reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence,,
to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in
general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these
are minor points. The defence of the Enghsh language implies
more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it
does not imply.

To begin with, it has nothing to do with archaism, with the
salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the
setting-up of a 'standard Enghsh' which must never be departed
from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrap-
ping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It
has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of
no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with
the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a

* One can cure oneself of tKe not un- formation by memorizing this sentence:
A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not mgreenjield.

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264

HORIZON

'good prose style'. On the other hand it is not concerned with
fake simplicity and the attempt to make written Enghsh collo-
quial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon
word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and
shortest words that will cover one's meaning. What is above all
needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other
way about. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to
surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you
think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you
have been visualizing, you probably hunt about till you find the
exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something
abstract you are more inclined to use'words from the start, and
unless you make a conscious eflfort to prevent it, the existing
dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense
of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better
to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning
as clear as one can through pictures or sensations. Afterwards one
can choose — ^not simply accept — the phrases that will best cover
the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impression
one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort
of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated
phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally.
But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a
phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct
fails. I think the follovdng rules will cover most cases:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech
which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon
word if you can think of an everyday Enghsh equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright
barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a
deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing
in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still
write bad Enghsh, but one could not write the kind of stuff that
i quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.

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POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 265

I have not here been considering the literary use of language,
but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for
concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have
come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and
have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political
quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you
struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as
this, but one ought to recognize that the present pohtical chaos is
connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably
bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.
If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst
follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary
dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity wiU
be obvious, even to yourself. Pohtical language — and with varia-
tions this is true of aU political parties, from Conservatives to
Anarchists — ^is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder
respectable, and to give an appearance of sohdity to pure wind.
One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least
change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if
one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase
— some Jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable
inferno or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin where it
belongs.

PIERRE LOEB

WILFREDO LAM

It is in the West Indies, crossroads of two continents, in this
cluster of islands which in so many respects, have assumed an
increasing importance, that today, art, the great migrant, has
ahghted. Throughout the centuries it changes place, abandoning
some and remaining for a long time faithful to others.

Pissarro, the true creator and apostle of impressionism, was
bom in the West Indies, of a Creole mother. Gauguin, the first of
all the great wanderers, first broke his journey in Martinique.
Cezanne's mother was of West Indian Creole extraction.

And in the West Indies, where the tom-toms can stiU be heard
feebly beating, where all the atavisms are still aHve, and where

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